Spiderwick Chronicles

He's played a brooding, chain smoking journalist, a diabolical Hollywood pimp and a high school English teacher who brazenly slept with Tony Soprano's wife. In a 30-year acting career, David Strathairn has been identified with dark, introspective characters who smolder their way through memorable performances.

"James and the Giant Peach" Roald Dahl For many years, James lived with his evil aunts, Spiker and Sponge. James tried to avoid the aunts, but they always got him. He then takes a wild journey on a giant peach. Inside the peach he is befriended by large insects: the grasshopper, ladybug, centipede, earthworm, spider and glow worm. These creatures hate Sponge and Spiker just as much as James does. Anybody who likes adventurous stories will like this book.

With character names like Hogsqueal, Mulgarath and Thimbletack, it's got to be derivative. So it's not altogether surprising that Mark Waters' ("Freaky Friday," "Mean Girls") adaptation of "The Spiderwick Chronicles" suffers slightly from that not-so-fresh feeling.

Creating a "real" fantasy means riding herd on digital characters to avoid the temptation to squish and stretch them into awkward -- not to mention anatomically incorrect -- poses. When making "The Spiderwick Chronicles," director Mark Waters and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel blocked camera moves to accommodate the live actors, and visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett made sure that the digital creations got the same respect.

Creating a "real" fantasy means riding herd on digital characters to avoid the temptation to squish and stretch them into awkward -- not to mention anatomically incorrect -- poses. When making "The Spiderwick Chronicles," director Mark Waters and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel blocked camera moves to accommodate the live actors, and visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett made sure that the digital creations got the same respect.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is an above-average game -- for a movie tie-in, that is. Usually, games that share a movie's title, characters and plot are hurriedly slapped together with little to offer gamers other than a way to relive the story (and earn the company a few extra bucks). These games are miserable to play and aren't worth the time. But Spiderwick is different from most. This simple tween-targeted game uses an effective control scheme to play its good blend of action and puzzles.

"James and the Giant Peach" Roald Dahl For many years, James lived with his evil aunts, Spiker and Sponge. James tried to avoid the aunts, but they always got him. He then takes a wild journey on a giant peach. Inside the peach he is befriended by large insects: the grasshopper, ladybug, centipede, earthworm, spider and glow worm. These creatures hate Sponge and Spiker just as much as James does. Anybody who likes adventurous stories will like this book.

Three new films -- science-fiction thriller "Jumper," family fantasy "The Spiderwick Chronicles" and dance drama "Step Up 2 the Streets" -- are expected to lead the box office over the extended holiday weekend that starts today with a batch of Valentine's Day releases and runs through Presidents Day on Monday. These figures are Times' predictions only. Studios will release this weekend's estimates on Sunday and final, five-day results on Tuesday. Along with the movies listed below, contenders to make the top 10 include "The Eye" and "There Will Be Blood."

Definitely, Maybe | A divorcing Manhattan dad recounts his pre-marriage life. Jumper | Teleporters fight those who would kill them. The Spiderwick Chronicles | Mystery awaits the Grace family at their great-great-uncle's home. Step Up 2 the Streets | A street dancer finds herself on the outside at arts school. George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead | Students making a horror film record real terror. The Killing of John Lennon | A look inside the mind of Mark David Chapman leading up to his murder of the former Beatle.

Mark Waters had just finished the acclaimed Lindsay Lohan high school comedy "Mean Girls" when he was asked to direct the fantasy adventure "The Spiderwick Chronicles." "I was looking to have a movie where I don't have locker doors slamming every time you called 'background action,' " recalled Waters, who also directed Lohan in the high school hit "Freaky Friday."

The Spiderwick Chronicles is an above-average game -- for a movie tie-in, that is. Usually, games that share a movie's title, characters and plot are hurriedly slapped together with little to offer gamers other than a way to relive the story (and earn the company a few extra bucks). These games are miserable to play and aren't worth the time. But Spiderwick is different from most. This simple tween-targeted game uses an effective control scheme to play its good blend of action and puzzles.

He's played a brooding, chain smoking journalist, a diabolical Hollywood pimp and a high school English teacher who brazenly slept with Tony Soprano's wife. In a 30-year acting career, David Strathairn has been identified with dark, introspective characters who smolder their way through memorable performances.

With character names like Hogsqueal, Mulgarath and Thimbletack, it's got to be derivative. So it's not altogether surprising that Mark Waters' ("Freaky Friday," "Mean Girls") adaptation of "The Spiderwick Chronicles" suffers slightly from that not-so-fresh feeling.

Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures will receive $300 million to help finance at least 30 films through a fund created with investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort. The Melrose 2 fund follows the creation in 2004 of the $225-million Melrose Investors fund, which helped pay for 25 movies, including the 2004 release "Mean Girls," Los Angeles-based Paramount and London-based Dresdner Kleinwort said Monday.

Persepolis Sony, $29.95; Blu-ray, $38.96 Marjane Satrapi’s graphic-novel memoir “Persepolis” depicts her girlhood, from struggling with her secular family in post-shah Iran to jetting off to school in Vienna, where she faced a different set of prejudices. Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's animated feature-film version loses some of the digressive, impressionistic structure that made the book so charming, but it adds a sense of comic whimsy that a single drawing can't replicate.